Profile

In government, the academy, private sector and journalism,
Juliette Kayyem has served as a national leader in
America’s homeland security efforts.

Kayyem is founder of one of the few female-owned security
businesses and provides strategic advice to a range of companies in
technology, risk management, mega-event planning and venture
capital. As a faculty member at Harvard’s Kennedy School of
Government, she teaches new leaders in emergency management and
national security and has authored several books on homeland
security.

Kayyem has spent over 15 years managing complex policy
initiatives and organizing government responses to major crises in
both state and federal government. Most recently, she was President
Obama’s Assistant Secretary for Intergovernmental Affairs at the
Department of Homeland Security. There she played a pivotal role in
major operations including handling of the H1N1 pandemic and the BP
Oil Spill response, as well as organizing major policy efforts in
immigration reform and community resiliency. Before that, she
was Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick’s homeland security
advisor where she guided regional planning, the state’s first
interoperability plan, and oversaw the National Guard. She has also
served as a member of the National Commission on Terrorism, a legal
advisor to US Attorney General Janet Reno, and a trial attorney and
counselor in the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department.
She is the recipient of many government honors, including the
Distinguished Public Service Award, the Coast Guard’s highest medal
awarded to a civilian.

A journalist and commentator, she has a weekly segment on
Boston’s public radio station WGBH. For nearly eight days
straight, she provided non-stop analysis during the 2013 Boston
Marathon bombings for CNN, where she continues to serve as a
security analyst. In 2013, she was named the Pulitzer Prize
finalist for her hard-charging editorial columns in the Boston
Globe focused on ending the Pentagon’s combat exclusion rule
against women, a policy that was changed that year.

She is a board member of Mass Inc., the Boston 2024 Olympic
Committee, the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign
Relations. Described as a “rising star” of the Democratic party, in
2014 Kayyem was a candidate for Governor of Massachusetts. A
graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, and the mother
of three children, she is married to First Circuit Court of Appeals
Judge David Barron. Her memoir –The Education of a Security Mom –
will be published by Simon and Shuster in 2015.

Courses

Fall

IGA-615Protecting the Homeland(s): The Challenges of Domestic Security